Best of Budapest & Hungary

The lighter styled wines of Villa Gyetvai Wine Estate sport new labels that capture the atmosphere of life at Lake Balaton. This year, for the first time, the Balatonfüred winery has added a reductive red wine called Rosso to its range of fresh whites, with its release scheduled to coincide with the start of the season.

    "Born in Eger, with a job as an architect in Budapest, I became a Balaton citizen only after the foundation of Villa Gyetvai. So I still get a special feeling when I turn off the motorway and approach Füred and see the lake for the first time. I know that I am not alone. We want to convey this incomparable atmosphere of being at Lake Balaton with our new family of labels", says Zsolt Gyetvai, owner of the winery, about his motivation.

    Intended primarily for restaurants and wine shops, the Gasztro family of wines is made up of four items: the crowd favourite Sauvignon Blanc, the exotically fragrant Fűszeres Tramini, the Balaton classic Olaszrizling and the newly launched, fruit bomb Rosso, an unoaked red, all from the 2023 vintage.

    The starting point for the creation of the labels was the culture of postcards, which has long been closely linked to Lake Balaton. However, art director László Ördögh, and the designers  Márta Eördögh and Zsófia Vida took an unexpected route, drawing inspiration from the back of the postcards, which contain personal messages, and made use of the familiar wavy line motif.

    The main visual element of the labels is a monochrome photograph. The designers looked for spontaneous shots that captured the incomparable atmosphere of time spent at Lake Balaton. At first glance, the photos may not seem particularly individual, but they are the kind of images you will look back on with a smile decades from now. All this is complemented by the geometric imagery that is so important to Villa Gyetvai wines. Sometimes the sun, sometimes a bunch of grapes, appears as a shape in a contemporary expression.

    "Designing food and beverage packaging is a privilege because it guarantees that, in addition to the visual impact, the smell, taste and texture of the product can be combined to appeal to several of the consumer's senses at the same time. My wish is that when someone takes this wine home, opens it and closes their eyes, they will be transported to a shady terrace or some other place that represents Lake Balaton," says László Ördögh, art director of Graphasel Studio, winner of 11 Red Dot awards, several RGB awards and two Apex first prizes.